Christopher Dammann Releases Dead Words, A New Collection of Spiritual Contrafacts Featuring Jim Baker, Jon Irabagon, James Davis, and Mike Reed
Out Now on Shifting Paradigm Records
Genres: Jazz, Improvised Music, Free Jazz
July 17, 2026 – Chicago bassist and composer Christopher Dammann presents Dead Words, a collection of spiritual contrafacts that traces a line from bebop through free jazz and into the present landscape of improvised music. The album follows Dammann’s 2025 sextet debut and further establishes his compositional voice: historically grounded, deeply swinging, and committed to exploration without nostalgia.
As critic Bill Meyer writes in the album’s liner notes, “Dead Words draws another line from bebop through free jazz and up to Dammann’s present integration of these sounds.” The release reflects years of musical development stretching back through Dammann’s work with groups including 3.5.7 Ensemble and Restroy while bringing together a quintet of musicians whose own careers embody a similarly expansive relationship to jazz history.
The ensemble features pianist Jim Baker, trumpeter James Davis, saxophonist Jon Irabagon, and drummer Mike Reed. “These are musicians I’ve listened to for at least 20 years,” says Dammann. “They each have their own voices, swing, and are deeply rooted in the history of this music while pushing it forward.”
Rather than treating tradition as fixed material to preserve, Dammann uses it as a flexible compositional framework. Even before bebop, jazz musicians wrote contrafacts — new tunes based on existing chord progressions — and the music on Dead Words extends that practice. “Each of these compositions is kind of an approach to problem solving, developing a vocabulary,” Dammann explains. “I was attempting to write the type of lines that would work in a variety of different contexts, like Charlie Parker wrote over those harmonic frameworks in a way that he could pull into his own compositions and use in a variety of places.”
But Dammann did not limit himself strictly to harmonic frameworks; in some cases, the inspiration came from a musician’s broader conceptual approach. “Untitled” is informed by Sunny Murray’s ability to generate pulse without fixed meter. “The pitches seem to speak a rhythm to him, and that’s an idea that I use all the time compositionally; the frequency of harmonic content is dictating the rhythm.” “Two Themes For Improvisation” engages with Bill Dixon’s concept of elastic time, while “White Gladis” reflects Dammann’s admiration for bassist Paul Chambers, particularly his playing with the Red Garland Trio and John Coltrane. “It’s so fluid, and the timbre is just right,” says Dammann. “Those are some of my first favorite records. I love how unapologetic and bold he always was with the bow.”
Dammann is similarly direct on “White Gladis,” using arco bass to pull massive low-end textures through the ensemble’s sharp cadences. The composition also reflects the album’s underlying sense of social and ecological awareness. Named after the whale attacking luxury yachts off the Spanish coast, the tune is, as Dammann describes it, “my ode to class solidarity, at least among certain mammals.” Another composition, “Montrose B,” draws inspiration from a family of beavers living in Chicago’s Montrose Harbor. “During the pandemic, I spent a lot of time walking over there,” Dammann says. “They’re prospering, thriving against all odds. The city is trying to trap them but they are thriving anyway.”
Throughout Dead Words, tightly constructed melodic material gives way to open improvisation, textural interplay, and collective momentum. The result is a record that treats bebop, free jazz, and contemporary improvisation not as separate languages, but as interconnected parts of a living tradition still capable of growth and surprise.
In addition to Dead Words, Dammann’s recent work includes his sextet’s debut recording for Out Of Your Head Records, the score for the award-winning feature Make A Distinction, the Restroy release sketches for ears&eyes Records, and IKZ’s I Saw the Cryptic Problem of My Generation Destroyed on Amalgam Music.
Dammann is a 2024–25 Illinois Arts Council Creative Catalyst Grant recipient and a 2025 3Arts Make a Wave Awardee. He is also a teaching artist with The People’s Music School.
TRACK LISTING
1. Montrose B (7:02)
2. Untitled (5:45)
3. White Gladis (5:31)
4. Two Themes For Improvisation (6:20)
5. This is an Unraveling (10:37)